Industry Insights

Alison didn’t go looking for trouble. Trouble came looking for her. When she agreed to become her firm’s COFA, it felt like the sensible, grown-up thing to do. She was a salaried partner at [...]

The SRA’s recent thematic review of compliance officers is one of those documents that looks modest on the page but has significant importance in practice. If your firm has ever treated COLP/COFA [...]

The cover-up is the killer. That sounds obvious until you look at how these cases actually unfold. A deadline is overlooked. A hearing is missed. A letter isn’t sent. A difficult file quietly [...]

Here at JBL HQ we had an internal discussion this week about conflicts of interest in law firms. How they are deceptively simple in principle, endlessly awkward in practice, and tend to surface [...]

By Sophie Cisler There’s a reason political scandals are so compelling. They tend to expose very human failings: assumption, trust and over-familiarity. And while most of us aren’t appointing [...]

The SRA has published a Warning Notice on “‘no win, no fee’ and other fee arrangements in high-volume consumer claims“. It is aimed squarely at firms (and individuals) doing high-volume [...]

By Samantha Bray We all like to think that the red lines are obvious. You don’t fake a signature. You don’t “tidy up” an attendance note after the event and pretend it was written at the time. [...]

By Sophie Cisler Like buses, consultations on how law firms deal with interest generated on client account seem to come one after the other. The SRA were wringing their hands about it last year, [...]

Client account reconciliations are one of the few truly prescriptive controls left in the Accounts Rules. For a busy COFA they can feel routine, even a bit dull, but the panel’s starting point [...]

There’s a moment every COLP recognises. A partner leans back and says, “We’ve always done it this way.” Or: “Don’t overthink it.” Or (a personal favourite): “We’ll tidy it up later.” It’s rarely [...]